In August 2014, during the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, the Tricycle Theatre asked the UK Jewish Film Festival to forego Israeli embassy funding. The festival refused, and very publicly walked away from the Tricycle, briefing the press that the theatre was boycotting a Jewish festival. The theatre came under immediate and sustained attack, all the way from campaigns to defund the theatre, via denunciations by liberal newspaper columnists, to intervention of the Secretary of State for Culture himself.

Do artists and arts organisations have the right to say ‘no’ when governments with negative human rights records try to co-opt culture in the service of their public relations strategies?

Please come to a discussion of the issues exposed by the Tricycle affair.